The brave new world of baseball’s expanded replay is now a reality, and the first challenge has been issued. It happened in today’s Chicago Cubs-Pittsburgh Pirates game when Cubs manager Rick Renteria asked umpires review an umpire’ call that had Jeff Samardzija out at first base in the fifth inning. The call on the field was confirmed after a 2-minute delay.

A short time later the system was used to overturn a call on the field for the first time ever when Freddy Gonzalez challenged a safe call on a Ryan Braun grounder to third base in the bottom of the sixth of the Braves game against the Brewers. On reply it was shown that the throw to first beat Braun and the call was overturned. That challenge took only 58 seconds

Even though the system was used multiple times during spring training, you have to figure that managers are going to want to ease into using it. These plays? Not that big a deal. But managers likely want to be familiar with it for when a game could turn on a close play.

The human part of the game is always there, it’s called let the players decide the game. The umps job is to get the calls right. It’s absurd that in this day and age almost every single person in the ballpark would have access to high def instant replay and the sport wouldn’t let the umpires use it.

Concise opinion, but I think you’ll find the majority of fans prefer the outcome of games to be decided between the lines, with as little inaccurate intervention from umps as possible, even to the potential detriment to pace. In other words, a 3-hour game whose outcome was mired by a (potentially) bad call vs. a 3-hour, 5 minute game where fans feel more confident the outcome was decided by the players. The latter is gonna win out.

No Richard, studies have shown that fans find bogus results much more satisfying than legitimate results. For example, Tigers fans were uniformly delighted when Galarraga lost his perfect game in 2010. The correct call that day would have ruined the whole experience for everyone.

grumpyoleman - Apr 1, 2014 at 9:04 AM

Galarraga gets talked about more because of the blown call then he would have for the perfect game. I’m a Tiger fan and pretty sure my life hasn’t been effected at all by the blown call. I still woke up the next day and life has continued on as expected since then. The human element created a conversation piece that will be discussed for many years, where if he had gotten the perfect game it would get very little mention.

happytwinsfan - Mar 31, 2014 at 7:51 PM

part of me agrees with you. life ain’t fair and neither is baseball. that’s part of the beauty of baseball. still, we are or should be always working to make life more fair, so why not the same for baseball.

I agree that it’s the umps’ responsibility to get the calls right, and that’s why the challenge system is stupid. It’s not the coach’s responsibility. Just review the play and buzz down if they need to review something.